1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the art of construction. More specifically, it relates to elongate drains for shower installations.
2. Brief Description of the Related Art
The drain of a shower is most often positioned in the center of a shower floor and the floor is sloped in all directions to direct water to the drain.
It is sometimes advantageous, however, to provide an elongate drain that extends the entire width or length of a shower stall. If such a drain is positioned along a center line of the shower, only two downwardly inclined slopes are needed, i.e., one on each side of the drain. If such a drain is positioned on a border of the shower, only one slope leading to the drain is needed. The drain itself has a central opening and the bottom wall of the drain is sloped toward such opening.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,155,015 to the present inventor, entitled Method For Making A Sloped Floor, discloses commercially successful float sticks that facilitate the sloping of a shower floor to a central drain and said patent is hereby incorporated by reference into this disclosure. Although the patented float sticks have been widely adopted by the industry, the conventional wisdom is that they have utility in central drain installations because the patent depicts the float sticks positioned in radiating relation to a central drain.
Accordingly, no elongate linear drain has been disclosed by third parties that could be installed with the aid of the patented float sticks. Installers of such elongate linear drains have thus resorted to conventional, more time-consuming and less reliable techniques for their installation.
Conventional linear drains are of monolithic, metallic construction. Linear drains of differing lengths must therefore be maintained in inventory so that the correct size will be available for use.
Thus there is a need for a linear drain formed of a non-metallic material that can be provided in modular parts that can be connected together so that an installer can quickly assemble a drain of any standard length.
In view of the art considered as a whole at the time the present invention was made, it was not obvious to those of ordinary skill in the field of this invention that the conventional method of installing elongate linear drains could be improved and therefore it was not obvious that the patented float sticks could be used in conjunction with such elongate linear drains nor was it obvious that such linear drains could be formed of non-metallic materials in modular, connectable units.